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Case Study: Harper Inc.

Harper Inc. sells color matching, dispensing, and mixing solutions to paint and coatings retailers, serving over 20,000 customers in domestic and international markets. Despite the company’s success, its sales process was largely manual and paper based. A customer order required several phone calls and emails, and a hand-typed order, which was faxed to Harper’s vendor partners. Part numbers were sometimes mistyped, leading to delays and rework. To support growth and reduce the manual workload, Harper Inc. needed a CRM system.

Requirements

Automate sales processes

Minimize paper

Deploy in the cloud

Deliver flexibility and ease of use

The Solution: Sugar Professional On-Demand

Having successfully deployed Sugar at another firm, company partner Joe Harper selected Sugar for Harper Inc. Just over two weeks after implementation began, Harper Inc. took its first order via Sugar. The company has since made Sugar the platform for nearly every aspect of its operations: order entry and processing, customer and lead management, tracking, and all the reporting for customers and vendor partners.

Business Benefits

Streamlined processes

Improved forecasting accuracy

Enabled international expansion

Eliminated costs to grow

Results

Expected to close $7.8 million in sales during 2012, up from $5.3 million in 2011

Increased average monthly orders to 300—a 33 percent increase over its best prior average of 200 per month

Slashed time needed for end of the month reporting from two weeks to 90 minutes

With Sugar, we fixed our order entry problem, which fixed forecasting and reporting. Sugar has brought our business to the point where we can start hiring people and eliminated our costs to grow.